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Best Jet Printer? MY600?

Best Jet Printer? MY600?

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We are looking at getting a Mycronic MY600 jet printer or an... - Jan 20, 2016 by Bill R

I think its sufficiently niche that the only similar product... - Jan 25, 2016 by Spoiltforchoice

You can buy an awful lot of stencils for 200K. Unless you... - Jan 27, 2016 by Sr. Tech

You can buy an awful lot of stencils for $200K but where/how... - Jan 27, 2016 by dyoungquist

I would challenge anyone to present a legitimate cost justif... - Jan 28, 2016 by Sr. Tech

> You can buy an awful lot of stencils for $200K > b... - Feb 01, 2016 by Spoiltforchoice

Why don't you look into a BotFactory Squink? It can deposit ... - Feb 05, 2016 by JF Brandon,JF Brandon

We have a MY500 and have had it for 3 years so far and for u... - Mar 02, 2016 by MBass

We've had our My500 for about four months now, and couldn't ... - Mar 07, 2016 by robgd3

Roughly what is the price of the Essemtec Scorpion? Is that... - Apr 05, 2016 by bootstrap

Essemtec like to keep some details to themselves to make you... - Apr 06, 2016 by Spoiltforchoice

Bill R

#75251

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 20 January, 2016

We are looking at getting a Mycronic MY600 jet printer or an auto stencil printer. We do low volume, high mix, fast turnaround assembly.

Can anyone share their experience with the MY600?

Is there any competitors to the MY600 on the market?

I'd appreciate your opinions on the jet printer vs. stencil printer but please no sales pitches.

Thank you in advance.

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Spoiltforchoice

#75271

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 25 January, 2016

I think its sufficiently niche that the only similar product is the Essemtec Scorpion, which is cheaper and slower. However depending on just how low volume you are Essemtecs platform can also pick and place on the same machine (albeit with few jet nozzles) see its Paraquda and Hydra Models. One thing is for sure however a jet printer is going to require more maintenance and be more restrictive with regards to compayible pastes than a Stencil printer. They have their place if you have the right mix of volume, margin and turnaround requirements and I would look at your own figures first to see what you think you are trying to gain from getting one.

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Sr. Tech

#75278

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 27 January, 2016

You can buy an awful lot of stencils for 200K.

Unless you are running "special case" products I'm not sure how the cost can be justified.

We get our stencils next day with no added charge.

The MY600 must use specified paste chemistries that are not offered by everyone. In addition you cannot jet WS paste.

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dyoungquist

#75280

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 27 January, 2016

You can buy an awful lot of stencils for $200K but where/how are you going to store all of those stencils? There is a certain $$$ value to all the space it will take to store them.

I have been told by a Mycronic salesman that they are working on qualifying water soluble paste for the MY600. However, it has been almost a year since I was told that and they still have not come out with it.

We do not have a jet printer but there are times when I wish we did. We buy around 25 stencils every year and I am starting to run out of space to store them. Our volume/revenue is not high enough to justify buying a new MY600 (or used MY500 for that matter) but for some businesses it is the right way to go.

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Sr. Tech

#75284

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 28 January, 2016

I would challenge anyone to present a legitimate cost justification on one of these machines that was not related to a very specific product/project.

In other words I want to see what the advantage is $$ wise purchasing this machine over a screen printer and stencils for general paste deposition.

We order 5-10 stencils a week. We have over 2000 stencils in a small footprint. We use space saver frames.

The cost for this machine simply remains too high.

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Spoiltforchoice

#75302

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 1 February, 2016

> You can buy an awful lot of stencils for $200K > but where/how are you going to store all of those > stencils? There is a certain $$$ value to all > the space it will take to store them. > > I have > been told by a Mycronic salesman that they are > working on qualifying water soluble paste for the > MY600. However, it has been almost a year since > I was told that and they still have not come out > with it. > > We do not have a jet printer but > there are times when I wish we did. We buy > around 25 stencils every year and I am starting > to run out of space to store them. Our > volume/revenue is not high enough to justify > buying a new MY600 (or used MY500 for that > matter) but for some businesses it is the right > way to go.

We use a similar number of stencils/year plus a bunch of other prototype/low value boards that either get pasted with those freebie tiny ones PCB makers will give you or end up getting soldered by hand with an iron. Both of these solutions are a royal pain. These combined with some low volume customers who keep tweaking their PCB designs on a whim mean I always have one beady eye on such technologies as possible solutions. However as user of an Essemtec Paraquda it is quite hard to justify even 15-20K USD on fitting a Jet nozzle to our pick and place platform for this purpose. Which looked at another way is ~150 stencils with advice and adjustments from a proper stencil manufacturer. There is another option of very small deskmounted automatic paste dispensers such as the Nordson Dima DD500, Martin Finetech Dotliner or perhaps a carefully selected Fisnar fluid dispenser, nowhere near as capable but a useful thing to have alongside a stencil printer for those times you need it.

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JF Brandon,JF Brandon

#75336

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 5 February, 2016

Why don't you look into a BotFactory Squink? It can deposit solder and pick-and-place. It prints conductive ink for the traces too. $3K is probably spot on for your budget. Check out http://www.botfactory.co

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MBass

#75404

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 2 March, 2016

We have a MY500 and have had it for 3 years so far and for us its a great machine. We are high mix, low volume manuafacturer and the MY500 replaced a DEK Horizon machine. We do large PCB's in it with >3000 components per side and yes the actual print cycle is longer (13 minutes) against the DEK print stroke of 30 seconds. But overall the whole cycle time of set up etc is way less on the MY500. The ability of the machine to adjust volume of paste on individual pads is outstanding. We have instant results no waiting for a stencil to try something. Dont get me wrong it won't suit all, and dont forget the ejectors need to replaced as they are a consumable and will last approx 30 tubes of paste,which for us is once a month. But overall we could justify it on cost savings alone in the line its placed.

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robgd3

#75420

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 7 March, 2016

We've had our My500 for about four months now, and couldn't be happier. We are a super-high-mix, super-low-volume shop, and the flexibility provided by the 500 over stencils is stunning.

So, you buy 5-10 stencils a week? That's 260-520 stencils a year. At an average of $200/stencil, that's $52,000-$104,000/year.

And, if you decide after receiving the stencil that there are issues that need to be resolved, you're into buying a new stencil for that project.

At a cost of $200k, it looks like your ROI on stencil cost alone is 2-4 years.

Then there's the paste cost. How much do you pay, on average, for 500g of paste? Around $100? How many times per year? The cartridge cost for the My500 is $15/100g. And, that 100g cartridge is lasting us, on average, about a month. There is no waste, no throwing away dried up paste that's been sitting on a stencil all day. No worrying about work time, or kneading/over-kneading the paste.

Now, is it slower than a squeegee cycle? Sure. It's rated, though, to keep up with 36,000 cph throughput on the machine. When conveyored in line, that's a pretty zippy paste cycle :)

Maintenance is quite a bit less than I had anticipated. The ejector head through which the paste passes is about $5/ea, and gets thrown away with each new cartridge of paste (so, yeah, that raises your paste costs a touch). Clean the machine, replace the disposable parts on schedule, and that's about it.

Programming takes us about 30-60 mins depending on the complexities of the board. The software suite that comes with it is pretty powerful when it comes to scanning gerber images. And I have a fully functional paste program in an hour, which, even at fully loaded costs for an engineer to perform, is less than the cost of a stainless stencil. And, if we run a job, and decide that we needed a step stencil, the re-program takes about 5 mins. Beats having to order, pay more for, and wait to receive a new stainless stencil. Oh, and if you decide you want to home plate the 0402's on your board, and leave the 0603's and larger with regular paste on pads, it's a 5 minute change.

We've also recently successfully deposited paste on 01005's, first try.

Now, the downside is that they are only doing no-clean at the moment, which sounds as though it could be a deal-breaker for some folks. Our post SMT processes are completed with water soluble, including selective solder, touch up, and hand soldering. We wash the boards in a standard DI wash process, and have found that there is no effect to the no-clean flux while doing this! That's right, no more white-cruddy deposits left over where the no clean flux has remained on the board.

It's certainly not for everyone, but, it's definitely been an awesome addition to my shop.

-I receive no compensation from Mycronic for these statements.-

cheers, ..rob

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bootstrap

#75509

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 5 April, 2016

Roughly what is the price of the Essemtec Scorpion? Is that capable of applying solder paste for 0201 discrete components and 0.40mm to 0.50mm pitch BGAs?

Also, what is the difference between my500 and my600? Are both currently made models? And roughly what are their prices?

Thanks.

PS: Looking at youtube videos, I wonder whether the solderpaste puddles are too large (on the Scorpion).

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Spoiltforchoice

#75511

Best Jet Printer? MY600? | 6 April, 2016

Essemtec like to keep some details to themselves to make you initiate contact but the Jet nozzle page states it can do 0.4mm dots. Last I checked a single Jet dispenser was about £15k GBP, the Scorpion machine itself is effectively the same platform as the Paraquda but with a different head, one might reasonably assume it costs about the same so about £60k GBP similar to rival place platforms if you manage to persuade them to separate out that cost. This would seem to suggest they SHOULD be able to sell the Scorpion for somewhere around £100K GBP / $150K USD but since when did things work that simply. Essemtec would more than happily tell you what you need to know, as would Mycronic, pricing on such investments depend hugely on exchange rates, current sales volume, what else you are buying and the vendors evaluation of how important a customer you might be in future. Having said that I don;t think either of the two have quite the same level of ridiculous markup and discount margins as some others. The My500 is no longer on the website suggesting the 600 supersedes it. I think the 600 offers a faster platform, much larger paste area and possibly extra dispensing options......

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